


We breathed Life back into each other

by ThatOneGirlBehindYou



Category: Pacific Rim (2013), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Injury Recovery, Multi, Non-Graphic Violence, Not Really Character Death, Past Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Past Sigyn/Loki - Freeform, Polyamory, and also because he´s recovering from trauma but mostly because i´m trash, at all, crying loki because i´m trash, you´re safe here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-28
Updated: 2014-12-28
Packaged: 2018-03-02 15:08:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2816624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatOneGirlBehindYou/pseuds/ThatOneGirlBehindYou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He met the brothers one or two years ago, when they walked in after Marshall Fury, with Coulson pointing out to the different teams at work as they passed them by.<br/>His first thought was that these guys looked pretentious as hell, walking around like they owned the place, with their uninterested eyes and confident steps. His second thought went a bit more on the <i>"when did they start letting models be pilots?"</i> direction.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We breathed Life back into each other

**Author's Note:**

  * For [LightNeverFades](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LightNeverFades/gifts).



> My FrostironFest entry for this year!  
> This is for prompt #22, that belongs to http://lightneverfades.tumblr.com/, they asked for a PacificRim!AU and had me hooked on the spot! I enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it!

**We breathed Life back into each other**

He met the brothers one or two years ago (three, actually. It was a Friday, and it was snowing outside the base) when they walked in after Marshall Fury, with Coulson pointing out to the different teams at work as they passed them by.  
His first thought was that these guys looked pretentious as hell, walking around like they owned the place, with their uninterested eyes and confident steps. His second thought went a bit more on the _"when did they start letting models be pilots?"_ direction.

Coulson pointed at Natasha and Sif sparring in the middle of their usual circle of spectators, and the red, black, and silver Jaeger behind them. Scarlet Fury is a bit smaller than most Jaegers, it was built for speed as well as for strength, and it's able to channel the electricity Kaijuus use for attacking into its own weapons for increased power. With those two inside the cockpit, it's even more lethal than any of the bigger ones.

"What do you think?" Rhodey asked, leaning against the rough piece of steel that would become the case of a neural connector. Tony wiped his forehead on a piece of oil-stained cloth, and studied the brothers again.

"Far too pretty to be useful, if you ask me." He said and Rhodey laughed hard.

"Deceiving appearances. They come from the Finland base."

"The one that level 4 tore down?"

"Kirvenjia, yes. Nasty beast, tar spit and concrete-thick hide. These two brought it down, they lost the Jaeger in the process, but they managed." Rhodey nodded in reluctant admiration and Tony rolled his eyes.

"And now they send them here to break down my babies, of course."

That was when Coulson gestured at them to come closer and he noticed the brothers looking over to them in interest.

"This is Colonel James Rhodes, he coordinates operations. And this right here is our lovable kick on the teeth, Mr. Tony Stark." Coulson said, gesturing at them. "He specializes at building the best Jaegers around, and also at tearing them down for unnecessary upgrades."

"Change is good, Phil. What good is a giant robot suit if you can't even fly in it?" Tony smirked, and Fury rolled his eyes. The brothers laughed courtly, and the black-haired one's green eyes pierced straight through him. "These are the newcomers, I presume?"

"Thor and Loki Borson, both A-grade pilots." Fury interjected. "I hope they'll be an asset to the base, since no one else wanted to take them in."

"Oh? And why is that?" Rhodey asked, interested.

"Our methods are a bit unorthodox. I'm afraid other bases find us quite problematic to work with." The green-eyed one, Loki, smirked at him, while the blond, Thor, let out an embarrassed laugh and smacked his brother's arm.

"Mostly because of him, I assure you." Thor excused himself with a smile.

"Oh, don't give me all the credit, Mr. Let's Use A Skyscrapper as a Hammer"

"You agreed to that!"

"Yeah, once."

"Well-"

"Well, that brings us to why we called you here, Stark." Fury cut between the brothers again. "The Borsons lost their last Jaeger during Kirvenjia's attack in Finland, it was a gen 4, barely used, Stormy Matador, you knew it?"

"Big, blue, retractable spear, and with the anatomy of a gorilla, yep."

"Did you ever see it in action?"

"During the attacks, yes."

"Then you know how these two work. Got anything to offer?"

Tony thought it up for a second as he remembered all the news clips and amateur videos of the fighting mech.

"I think you might just be the ones my new one has been waiting for." He said before he composed his best grin. "I need to see you spar."

\--

It was a match worth watching. The brothers sparred against each other and Tony watched every movement, every step, with a technical eye.

Thor was a powerhouse. His training Bo hit the mat with enough strength to reverberate through the floor, and whenever Loki got caught in one of his punches or kicks, the man was propelled away like he was nothing. He pointed to chest and head more often than not, and resisted his brother's comebacks with a fierce frown and a grunt.

Loki was just as lethal as his brother, if only in a different way. He moved faster than the bigger man, used the training Bo to push Thor away as much as to strike him on the back of the knees and the middle of the back. He rolled away and back into position when Thor's hits landed, and used the impulse to throw himself back into attacking.

It lasted a while, but in the end Thor fell on his back after a particularly well aimed kick, and Loki stepped forward to deliver the mock ending hit with the tip of his Bo staff, a foot firmly planted on the floor on each side of Thor's broad chest.

Tony watched the repetition of the sparring session many times that day, and even by the sixth time, he still held doubts about the veracity of the thing. 

Thor awaiting for the tip of the staff to hit his forehead, Thor bending himself at the waist and hooking a foot on each side of Loki's hips, and sending him rolling to the floor.  
The brothers both sat up in a second and Loki looked at his brother with a murderous expression.

"And you call me a cheater?!" He exclaimed even as his frown turned into a smirk that mirrored Thor's.

"A little too much time with you in the Drift, dear brother." The blond threw back.

They looked over at their audience and then directly at Tony, who nodded his head slowly.

\--

"This is my pride and joy, to be honest, but don't tell the others." Tony said, looking up at the unused Jaeger. It stood at nearly 290 feet tall, with 360 degrees of turning capacity on every major joint, hydraulic-powered motions, and just about every kind of long range projectile he had thought off on the way of making it.

The brothers looked up in awe and Thor clapped his back with enough strength to propel him a couple of steps forward. "You're right to call it so, friend, this Jaeger is magnificent." The blond murmured, prompting a smirk from Tony. The bruises the Borsons had gifted each other with still lingered, but had started to fade away, and he'd been working on a new weapon that would make them swallow their tongues, he was sure. But first...

"So? What are you going to name her?" He asks, and the brothers look at each other for exactly one and a half seconds before their lips split in mischievous grins.

"Ragnarok Hammer," They say at the same time and Tony rolls his eyes because geez, these guys are _dorks_.

\--

They had a level 2 attack a few weeks later but instead of sending Scarlet Fury to do a fast, clean job like they always do, Fury sends the Borson brothers, a sort of test to see how they would interact and behave with the in-base personnel.

"No funny business, either of you." The Marshall warned and Thor noddeds, serious and grim-faced, and Loki gave Tony a side-eye look that hid a smirk.

Tony, not currently under scrutiny, returned it fully.

The brothers climbed into their unsubtly-named Jaeger and Drifted perfectly. Tony watched his baby fly away and wished her a safe trip back.

\--

On the bright side, the Kaijuu was destroyed in less than fifteen minutes.

Incidentally, so were an abandoned lighthouse and a couple of rust-covered cargo ships.

On the brighter side, the spear Tony designed unfolded itself into a hammer the moment it was passed to the side of the Jaeger Thor controlled, and Tony could practically hear the blond's squeak of awe.

\--

"I'm gonna sit with you." Loki declared and lowered his dinner tray on Tony's table like it was made of gold.

"Not that I'm complaining, but pilots usually sit together." Tony smiled and pointed to the table where Sif and Natasha sat with Clint and Kate and Steve and Bucky. A deeper look revealed that even Thor was sitting there as well.

Just as he wondered why Loki would choose to distance himself from his brother, he saw Rhodey and Bruce heading towards them, both arching an eyebrow at his current company. He gave them an imperceptible shrug and they continued their way.

"A bit too much time with the brother?" Rhodey asked as he took a seat next to Loki and the guy in question snorted.

"Well, we usually want to kill each other whenever we're together, so yeah, I guess." He answered, but continued after a brief hesitation. "Or _I_ want to kill him most of the time, I guess. He's just too clingy."

"I can see that." Bruce's voice was barely heard from where he sat next to Tony and they followed his eyes to where Thor had an arm wrapped around Steve's and Sif's shoulders, laughing.

"So tell us, pretty boy." Tony started and Loki's eyes gleamed in challenge at the nickname. "What was the Finland base like?"

"Big enough for Kirvenjia, Thor and me to play for a while." Loki answered and his thin lips spread in a smirk.

"Oh, well, our base is quite tiny so I´m sorry, but you´ll have to take your games outside." Rhodey intervened in less than a blink and Loki laughed in delight. He had a nice laugh. A bit manic. Sort of cute.

"About Kirvenjia, I've been meaning to ask you-" Bruce started, but Tony cut him up with an exaggerated groan.

"Here we go again." He sighed, and Bruce rolled his eyes at him.

"Excuse me, I wouldn't have to ask if we had gotten some of its remains, and we didn't get any remains because a certain pair of _someones_ decided to set its body on fire." Bruce pointed the last part of his sentence at Loki, who shrugged in return.

"It just wouldn't stay dead. We had to make sure."

Tony smiled. "I like how you think."

\--

"Did you need something?" Loki asked in between gulps of water.

Tony looked up from his blueprints and arched an eyebrow. "Me?"

"Yes, you." Loki looked accusingly at him. "It´s the third time you've come here while I'm training, what do you want?" He was gasping slightly, probably because of the effort he'd put into kicking the filler out of the punching bag. Tony had the sudden thought that he'd like to hear that more often, followed by the thought that well, they were living in a world that was constantly under attack by alien sea-creatures that increased in strength and number with each incident and that he could very well be dead by tomorrow, so why the _hell_ not tell the truth?

"I'll stop if you want me to. I just like watching you kick things." He shrugged. "That, and you have a nice butt."

For a second Loki just stared blankly at him, maybe in shock, and then, after a second, his ears turned a curious shade of red and he rolled his eyes.

"You're so basic." He threw back and walked out of the gym.

Tony didn't miss the evaluating look he gave to his own butt when he walked across the mirror wall and the fact that he hadn't been ordered to stop watching. 

He smirked for the rest of the day.

\--

He found himself spending much more time at the gym than what was probably healthy for him, if the pains in his back from trying to sketch blueprints and fix stuff without a solid surface were to be taken into account, but hell, lately skin and sweat and green eyes held much more appeal than metal and wires.

\--

"And we need new back armor, much thicker." The constant buzz that was Loki listing the many upgrades he and Thor wanted on Ragnarok Hammer cleared up enough for Tony to catch that last one.

"Do you have any idea how hard designing a thick back armor that doesn't halt your movements would be? You basically dance in that Jaeger, Borson, and I know that's _you_ and you alone. I´m not going to burn my eyebrows so that you don't get stabbed in the back, just turn around, that´s why I designed completely rotating joints." 

Loki smiled coyly. "Well, you did say you liked my butt, didn't you? It would be a shame if it got completely wrecked because we couldn´t turn in time."

"Yeah, I said I like it, not that I'm going to hunch over a table for three weeks for it."

"I don't know why I asked." Loki answered with a shrug. "Thor _did_ say it would be too much work for you."

\--

"There, that armor is thicker than a fucking Level 5's hide, and wait until I paint it, it'll look awesome."

"You're a delight, Tony, did I tell you that before?" Loki patted his back. "Also, did I mention that shock cannon I thought of in our last meeting?"

\--

Natasha and Clint appeared by his side without a single sound, which was by no means new.

Steve followed in exactly the same fashion, which _was_ new.

"Boring day?" Tony asked, amused. He sometimes envied the pilot's having so much work to do all the time.

"A little." Steve answered with an abashed smile. "What are you doing?"

"A shock cann-"

"Is this yours?" Clint held up a book that had been lying on a chair by the wall, and Tony shook his head.

"Nah, Loki left it here yesterday." He looked back forward in time to see Natasha's eyebrow arching.

"You've been spending a lot of time with that guy lately." She declared, staring right at him.

"We like annoying each other."

"Found your match, Stark?" Natasha smirked.

Tony shrugged. "He's a jerk. I like him."

"Why does that sound so... you?" Steve intervened, rolling his eyes at them both.

\--

The first time Tony thought he should kiss him they were sitting at the edge of the terrace, their feet hanging two miles from the water's surface and the sun setting in front of them.

"Do you still miss her?" He asked about Sigyn while thinking of Pepper.

He used to think a lot about Pepper, but lately the thoughts had been distancing themselves, and he couldn´t help the guilt.

Still, he distracted himself in the way Loki's eyelashes brushed against his cheeks when he closed his eyes and nodded.

"I'm glad she's safe now, though." Loki whispered in a voice so calm and quiet and _un-Loki_ like, that Tony reached for his hand. Loki pulled his away.  
Tony still thought he should kiss him, but he didn't.

\--

The first scare came exactly three days after the `You survived a year in the Manhattan base´ party, like, Tony could still feel the burn of the irrational quantities of booze he had ingested while trying to get Loki drunk because drunk Loki was absolutely _hilarious_ , when the alarm for the two Level 5's came. 

Fury dispatched Scarlet Fury, Ragnarok Hammer and Bullseye Bishop to deal with them, and Tony thought nothing of it. With those teams in the field there was hardly anything to fear.

He had just begun picking up the party remnant from his workshop so that he could start working on that upgrade for Winter Avenger's arm, when Rhodey ran down the hallway and poked his head in through the door.

"They're back." Was the only thing he said, but the expression on his face was enough for Tony to drop the titanium plate he was holding and run behind him.

The Jaegers were a mess. All of Scarlet Fury's beautiful black, silver, and red paintwork had been peeled away in big, claw-like marks that left no room for imagination, and Sif sat at its feet, holding a bag of ice over her eye while Natasha got her head bandaged. Bullseye Bishop's visor had been smashed, and the mechanics worked in tandem with a pair of paramedics to pull Clint and Kate out of the cabin. Ragnarok Hammer was, thankfully, still in one piece, but its pilots were nowhere to be seen.

"The Borson brothers, where are they?" He asked urgently to a nurse as she passed by his side.

She sighed and gestured at the hallway that lead to the hospital wing. "They were taken in for surgery." She said and Tony felt his stomach drop. "Apparently the biggest Kaijuu dragged the Jaeger underwater and shook it up badly before the other two could give them a hand. Anyways, the submarine mode didn't have the time to activate fully, and the water that got into the cabin caused some damage to the Drift connectors. They're operating on them to prevent any nervous injury from abrupt Drift breaking."

Ok, Tony thought. Next in list was a faster submarine mode.

He followed the nurse and sat across the closed surgery room's door for what felt like hours.

\--

"You could at least _try_ not to kill yourselves when taking down those monsters, has that ever occurred to you two?" Tony leaned against the wall of the hospital wing room, and glared at the two pilots on their respective white beds.

Thor's cracked lips stretched into a smile, but he didn't open his eyes.

"Loki, your boyfriend's here." He muttered out in a voice that sounded like sandpaper.

Loki stretched a hand and tugged harshly on the IV tube connected to his brother's arm.

\--

Tony had to restrain himself from groaning when he saw Rhodey coming at him from the end of the hallway again.

They'd been playing mouse and cat for over three hours now.

"What the fuck do you want now?" Tony snapped. "I have a ton of work to do and I can't stop for gossip." He knew it was the wrong thing to say when Rhodey's eyes shone with mirth.

"So there _is_ something to gossip about?" He asked.

"We were ON THE ROOF, we go there all the time, nothing happened." Tony said. "There are cameras there, ask Happy if you don't believe me."

"Thing is," Rhodey says, still smiling. "I know you know exactly where the cameras are."

"So?"

"So I already checked with Happy. I saw you going in and going out, but something _could_ have happened in between."

"Well, nothing happened." Tony said, repressed a pout, and wished it wasn't the truth.

\--

"Why didn't you tell me you own the base?" Asked Loki one day, stomping into his workshop. Tony looked up from the new sensor he was building for Bullseye Bishop and stared up at the angry pilot.

"I thought the chances you'd burn it up out of spite if I did something that rubbed you the wrong way were high enough without you knowing it was my property."

"Well you were right, but still, you _should_ have told me." Loki shoved a couple of screwdrivers away and sat on the table. Only then did he notice Tony's smirk.

"I _should_ have?"

"Yes?"

"Like, in a `we totally have something going on and you shouldn't keep secrets from me´ way?" For a second there Tony thought his face might split because of his grin, when Loki hopped back off the table and stomped his way out, making sure to topple a chair to the ground.

\--

The first time Tony kisses him, Loki's helping him try some newly designed Drift harnesses, hanging a few inches in front of his face like a particularly disgruntled Christmas ornament.

"Are you comfortable?" Tony asked, and Loki arched an eyebrow in a manner Tony had come to know quite well by then. "I mean _more_ comfortable than usual, Sweetcheeks, why do you have to be so difficult?"

Loki smirked.

"Got to keep you on your toes."

Tony rolled his eyes, secretly glad he was out of reach to be smacked over the head for using the most hated petname. "You certainly do."

"Even on your toes, you're not tall enough, though." Loki said and Tony imagined he stretched his neck down to try and get his face closer to his own.

"Tall enough for what, Loki?" Tony said, his mouth drying and his hand sweating around the can of oil.

"What do you think?" Loki answered with what he'd later intensely deny was a pout.

Tony stretched his hand, never taking his eyes off Loki's green ones, and pushed the release button.

The harnessing platform descended slowly, and he covered Loki's pale cheeks with his hands. The oil can made a dull clank when it hit the floor, but neither of them was paying attention.

Loki placed his own hands on Tony's bare shoulders, and when he pulled, Tony went along.

\--

Thor punched him exactly once, but it managed to crush his nose. Tony wasn't surprised.

"What the hell was that?" He asked Loki later, while he waited for a doctor to beg her for some painkillers and after Loki had stopped his hysteric fit of laughter.

"Well, dear... I might like dirty talk in bed, but my brother apparently doesn't approve of it." He said, the mirthful glint in his eyes made all anger drain out of Tony and he sighed.

"Please be more careful on the next Drift?" He begged.

"OR" Loki punctuated. "I could tell you what _I_ saw on _his_ memories."

"Is it worth a broken nose?"

"Let's just say Natasha and Sif need a much, much bigger bed, and better-quality handcuffs, if my brother's back pain and unexplainably chaffed wrists are to be taken into account."

"Shit." Tony arched both eyebrows, surprised. "Those two are going to kill him."

"Didn't feel like he cared, to be honest." Loki shrugged.

\--

The last time he saw them go on a mission was about half a day ago (14 hours and 36 minutes, but who's counting?) along with Winter Avenger, because Scarlet Fury was still being repaired from last month's attack.

He watched the screens with Rhodey on one side and Bruce on the other, and when the fight got too intense his glance drifted to Clint's reassuring hand on Natasha's shoulder, whose own hand was intertwined with Sif's, their eyes not leaving the screen for a second.

"I should have finished that blade Bucky wanted..." He muttered when Winter Avenger parried a claw away with its silver arm.

Rhodey exhaled slowly.

"They'll be all right." He muttered, but his knuckles were white around the chair's backrest and he stumbled when Bruce rose to his feet and his counterweight vanished.

"Everything fine, Brucie?" Tony brought himself to ask, and his friend looked at him with worry heavy in his eyes.

"I'm stepping out for a second." Bruce said.

In the end, Tony went with him. He couldn't handle watching it for a second longer, not if he wasn't allowed to intervene. Perhaps that was his mistake.

\--

He's basically the first one to see the Jaegers approaching, since, as everyone will tell him later, lights went out inside the base minutes before the Kaijuu was killed and they spent precious moments trying to fix them instead of going out to look.

This is why when Tony spots Ragnarok Hammer, or rather _half_ of Ragnarok Hammer, leaning heavily on Winter Avenger, the only thing he can do is cling to Bruce's arm with such strength it must be hurting him, and drag him down to the landing decks.

The rest of the base's crew joins them there, and when Winter Avenger's cabin hatches open and Steve and Bucky come out looking ten years older than when they left not a day ago, he's the first one to get a hand on them, to ask the mandatory _`Are you all right'_ s, and the first to see the two pilots' eyes searching frantically for _something_ in Ragnarok Hammer's cabin.

It opens slowly, like the Jaeger's an agonizing creature giving its last breathe, and the first thing to be heard from it is Loki's screaming.

At first it's unintelligible, just his voice getting ripped to shreds, and Tony thinks that's the worst part, until he actually gets to climb into the hatch and sees the man's bloody nails clawing at his Drift harness, his eyes maddened far beyond recognition, and his screaming takes a shape.

"HE'S NOT DEAD!" He repeats incessantly, and when Tony takes a second from simultaneously trying to calm him down and pry the harness open without causing his neural system any major damage and follows his gaze, he finds what has gotten him so worked up.

Thor certainly _looks_ dead, with a nasty slash all across his face that has painted his left side red, and hanging off a partially shredded harness himself, surrounded by the emergency medical personnel.

"What the hell happened?!" He exclaims, not sure who he's asking, but it's Bucky who answers, still standing behind him with his co-pilot.

"The Kaijuu was trying to rip us open, and they got it off us." He explains in that low, wary mutter of his. Tony did always wonder what made a guy that gloomy hang out and fit perfectly with the ball of sunshine that was Steve. "It blasted some kind of acid- It ate through the metal, and then it turned on them."

"We managed to get back on our feet and finish it, but it had already gotten to them, and since the hull was weakened..." Steve offers, looking sadly at Loki, who has stopped struggling with the harness and is now just _there_ , hanging limply and still muttering _`He's not dead´_ to himself.

Tony shakes his head. "There's nothing you could've done." He says, and it hurts his throat as if he'd just swallowed a fistful of nails. "Thor is strong, he'll pull through."

Together, the three of them manage to free Loki and lower him gently to the soaked cabin floor. The man crumbles under his own weight, and it's only when Steve lifts him up that Tony notices the greenish fluid oozing off from the gash in his leg.

That´s also when Loki apparently decides to give up on consciousness altogether and Tony springs off to drag a paramedic away from Thor.

\--

The days after that are hell.

Tony spends them all in the medical wing, watching the weak rise and fall of Loki's chest and the peaks and valleys in the heart rate monitor.

"Wake up, you bastard, I know you're hearing me." He says to his ear every twenty seconds or so, and brings Loki's hand to his lips to make sure it hasn't grown colder.

\--

When Thor wakes there's practically a party at the base, but Tony stays in the infirmary and, after less than an hour, is joined by the party boy.

"You look like shit." Says Tony, scrapping his eyes away from Loki ( _Why hasn't he woken up yet? It was just a leg wound, he should be fine, he MUST_ ) to find that Thor's handsome face has changed quite drastically.

There's a bandage covering his left eye, though Tony can't say for sure if there's something underneath or not, and crossing his whole face like a mountain chain lays a red, swollen and hastily sewn gash. Now _that_ will make a nice scar. Thor's only visible eye lightens up just enough to partly hide the pain in his glance.

"You're no better off, Tony." He says, and drags a chair to sit next to him.

They stay in silence for what feels like an eternity, the steady but weak whisper of Loki's breathing the only sound in the room, until Thor breaks the tension by asking, in a voice so small Tony's surprised when he looks over and doesn't find a child sitting by his side.

"What happened to him?"

Tony blinks once, slowly, painfully, dragging the seconds as if his closed eyelids could take him away from reality.

"The doctors say you got lucky, actually." He starts, and gestures at the multitude of bags and tubes connected to the needle going into Loki's arm. "You got struck by the worst of the claw, and the harness ripped in a certain way that you were sheltered by what remained of the cabin."

"... And Loki?" Thor risks, his hand hovering over his brother's and shaking so badly that Tony doesn't believe for a second it's from the pain.

"Loki got just a scrape from that thing, here on his thig." He lifts the pristine white sheets and reveals the bandaged gash. It looks clean and sterile, hidden under its gauze, but he knows the skin is still swollen, the blood is still greenish, and the meat is still turning black. "But his harness held him right there, and when the Kaijuu spat its acid again, some of it got into the wound."

Another long silence, in which Tony pretends he doesn't hear the choked sob that echoes like a crashing wave in the room. 

"Is he going to lose that leg?" Thor's eye is fixed on his brother's sleeping face.

For a second it seems like a valid question, and then Tony thinks it over and realizes the man didn't ask if his brother was going to _live_.

He feels as if a weight has been lifted from his chest and he nearly laughs before he manages to stifle it by burying his face in Loki's belly. Thor's sure enough for both of them and thats just perfect.

"Let's hope he doesn't." He mutters once he lifts his head again, and ignores the wet spots on the sheet. "But just in case it happens, I'm gonna go get some blueprint paper, watch him for a while."

\--

Tony makes a cane instead, despite of his conflicted feelings of relief vs. his `that robotic leg was amazing´ feelings, but he doesn't mention that. He likes the leg design, but that doesn't mean he wants to have to craft it for himself, thank you very much. 

Thor is bouncing around like a puppy around his brother, as Loki limps heavily into his `Welcome back to this shithole´ party.

"I'm so sorry we couldn't do anything." Steve apologizes again, this time to the right people. Bucky looms behind him like a shadow, waiting for the brothers' answer.

Thor's face healed nice, the gash now only a rugged white line that divides his face into what they jokingly call `Nat's side´ and `Sif's side´, but by some miracle his eye got spared and it shines with mirth at Steve's words, before he engulfs him in a hug.

"You saved our lives, you idiot." Loki snorts at Steve, keeping his distance from the display of affection and nods silently to Bucky in acknowledgment. Bucky nods back and clears a way for him through the well-wishers, until he gets to Tony's side.

Truth is, he still looks a little green, and his hands shake in a worrying way when he holds stuff, but Tony's not going to pay attention to little nuisances.

He sits Loki next to him and keeps him fed and accompanied and laughing for hours, until a doctor comes in to announce them it's time for him to go back to rest, and then he walks back to the infirmary wing with him, a little too slow for his taste, but a little too fast for how much he sees Loki struggling with the walk.

"What were the doctor's orders?" He asks once they get to the room, gesturing vaguely to the injured limb.

Loki glares down at it as if it has personally offended him.

"Lots of rest and rehab, and I might be able to go back into a Jaeger someday. _Might_." He answers dryly, and Tony sees a crack in the `cheery and totally happy to be alive´ mask Loki wore to the party.

Of course this must be a curse for him, for this fighter, this dancer, this hunter of his, but he can't bring himself to be sad.

"I love you." He says, and is surprised when it comes out so calmly.

Loki stares at him with shining eyes for a second, and then, slowly, a tear slides its way down his still-too-pale-and-taut cheek.

He shouldn't be surprised, Loki´s emotions have always been like fire, burning slow until they catch and then becoming a full-blown inferno.

It's all he can do to pull them both to sit down on the bed, when Loki's breath degenerates into ragged sobs and his cheeks grow red from him wiping the tears off before they can even drip down his face.

"I should have died." He says, shaking, and Tony pulls him tighter against him. "It would have been better."

"I love you." Tony answers. It's not a coherent answer, but Loki's not being coherent either, so it can be excused.

"I will never fight again-"

"I love you."

"I will have to leave the base-"

"I love you." He tightens his hug with every exchange, until they're both breathing out the salty smell of Loki's tears and Tony realizes his own face is not so dry anymore, and just how _tired_ he is and how _scared_ he's been. "I love you, I will love you if we have to cut that leg off, I will love you even if we _don't_ , and you end up climbing into a fucking Jaeger to go punch monsters in the face again, and I will love you wherever we are, because if you leave this place then I'm going with you." He blurts out, rushed and sloppy.

Loki leans his head on his shoulder and says nothing, takes deep breaths until his own shoulders stop shaking and his grip on the sheets lightens.

Tony lowers them both until they're lying on the bed that's much too small and cold to be comfortable, but somehow is anyways, and he rubs a hand across Loki's broad, tense back, trying to soothe himself.

"I love you" A voice says, and Tony's hand stills for a second when he realizes it wasn't his.


End file.
